PM NOMIONATIONS: An Open Call for an OK Leader

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sli
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Re: PM NOMIONATIONS: An Open Call for an OK Leader

#21 Post by sli »

We're getting way off focus here. The original idea was that the project leader that were looking for act more like a project manager, with leads under them (lead dev, forum lead, doc lead, etc) that would manage the responsibilities of the various teams and people. That's the position that was discussed and that's the position for which I applied. Who takes up those positions is not my concern (at the moment). I don't think now is the the to restructure the entire team, that would be the manager's job to be handled after this is all over and done with.

Priorities, people. Priorities.
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Re: PM NOMIONATIONS: An Open Call for an OK Leader

#22 Post by ponty »

Edit: lol, just saw Sli's post go through while writing this. Ya, please refer to: URGENT: Future of Openkore - community opinion encouraged! topic.

Though awesome discussion everyone. :D I was waiting for someone to bring this up about defining the role of this "leader" (well I just put that in the title to make it catchy, but ya leader = Project Manager (PM)) and whether or not we should even have one.

So here's my take on this:

For any continuing SUCCESSFUL project that have ever come across with, there has always been some sort of leadership controlling the project. The proof? Just go over to sourceforge and check out the top open-source projects there, and you'll find that each one of them has someone or even a whole team just managing the project. Why am I comparing us to them? To be blunt, because I thought this project has the potential to be one of those top projects. I want to see Openkore get the best award for Gaming Project at some point, or even aiming higher being a top project of the month on Sourceforge.

So back to defining the role. Yes, I used the word 'managing', not developing code, documenting guides, or even providing support though all these roles are also very important to the project as well. Another thing you'll find in most of these projects, is that that person or team all know how to do any of the other roles. Reason is you have to know at some basic level what the others are doing in order to be an overseer of say here Openkore. So you sorta need to know about the other roles, but not necessarily the small details to it though it would be a big plus if you did as you'll be able to probably provide better guidance in that area. So for me, I'm not exactly looking for someone who's an expert at everything to lead here, but probably someone who knows enough of everything to make things happen more efficiently. So I think Darki here, pretty much hit it on the nail with his post when he said:
Darki wrote: In my oppinion we don't need more smartazz to rule the project, we need ORGANIZATION. So, well, maybe with "sub-leaders" we would have it more organized, but things could work without them if this is a REAL intend to improve the project. We don't need a person who knows EVERYTHING, we just need a person that is able to rule the three "sections" of OpenKore community properly and coordinate them. I don't need to know how to code in perl to tell a developer "move your ass and work" (for example). This is the real duty the leader should accomplish: "Move your ass and work". To know if a code is well done, you can ask a dev. To fix a manual you can ask a documentation writter. To mod the forums you already chose the mods. If you know how to do those jobs by yourself, of course it's perfect, but it's not 100% needed.
So what responsibilities should they have?
  • Foreseeing: Set and define goals and objectives. Imagining where the project best needs to go and how to get there from point A to point B and adapting if there's obstacles as they come along.
  • Building (Capacity):
    Since this is an opensource project, the amount of development is proportional to the activity of the community. It's obvious that we have a fairly large pool of users (ya I know most are leechers just passing through, but there's potential there). However, there are people who pass by sometimes who are interested in helping, but don't know what to do to help out or just get shunned away...when they do (though that rarely happens here I think).
  • Checking:
    Not exactly checking the very details of someone's done their job right (that person should have done it themselves or ask a second opinion from a pro), but whether what they have done fits well in the overall picture. So like, is that new feature just bloat and eating up resources? Is the current forum setup working to provide support or are there better alternatives to doing this? Documentation and forums is available, but why aren't a lot of people reading it? What can be improved? Is everyone doing what they're suppose to do on time? Is everyone happy? What are the problems that need to be dealt with on a wide-scale?
  • Coaching:
    Coaching others that have been involved and shown interest in helping out to perform best at what they're doing now and possibly even knowledge to manage their own team so basically creating more leaders out of the pool of volunteers. Getting people to think about what they're doing, not just doing it for the heck of it. This usually makes a major difference in the quality that comes out of someone's work. (I didn't want to use the word 'training' here, but it's similar though not exactly the same things)
  • Motivating:
    Knowing how to get people to do things for you is often times hard, but there are people out there who have a natural talent for this. I find this the most important one as it gets people moving and getting on top of things.
  • Some other ones...but those were the main ones that came to mind when writing this.

Other Notes:
Thanks Kali for the nomination, but I'll have to decline for now since I know I'll be AWOLing quite a bit from time to time because of my job+school and I prefer someone who is going to be here more steadily than I would be. Though in any other case, I would take up this challenge. I'll be around to help grow the community here though.
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Re: PM NOMIONATIONS: An Open Call for an OK Leader

#23 Post by ponty »

Oh can one of the global mods add this to the first post:

UPDATES!
Currently, 3 nominations in, well 2 really cause I'm not really included. So the nominations I have received so far are:
sli: http://forums.openkore.com/viewtopic.ph ... 607#p22313
kLabMouse: http://forums.openkore.com/viewtopic.ph ... 607#p22339
ponty by kali (but I am unsure of taking on this role due to my time commitments): http://forums.openkore.com/viewtopic.ph ... 607#p22564

Since I'm a non global moderator, and I can't edit my first post without making it unglobalized again. Thanks!

Less than a week to go till this is closed!
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Re: PM NOMIONATIONS: An Open Call for an OK Leader

#24 Post by kLabMouse »

Update: Done.

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Re: PM NOMIONATIONS: An Open Call for an OK Leader

#25 Post by ponty »

Merci.
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Re: PM NOMIONATIONS: An Open Call for an OK Leader

#26 Post by Technology »

Darki wrote:While I see your point, I don't really understand why is needed a "leader" for all the sections.
The sub-leaders will lead their part of the community (devs, doc writers, moderators, users) and will communicate with each other.
"Why like 3 different leaders?"
- Because they each have expertise on their area of the kore project they will be able to mentor, monitor and hire new staff members for that area.
- Because they will act as representative (leader) for that area and communicate with the representatives of other area's.
- Because they will start off initiatives based on proposals by the group that they represent or proposals passed on by other sub-leaders.
Darki wrote:Maybe the idea of the leader developer is the strongest here, but still I don't see a real need for this, being here all devs "in theory" reasonable people that can discuss rationally for a matter.
The lead developer makes the final decision and holds final responsibility, he will mentor the other developers when needed and hire new developers.
Because he is the most experienced developer, he will have authority on that matter.
Darki wrote:I don't need to know how to code in Perl to tell a developer "move your ass and work" (for example). This is the real duty the leader should accomplish: "Move your ass and work".
I don't agree,
this is an opensource project and indeed not a corporation and for this very reason you just don't command or boss other people around.
That is just a wrong interpretation of leadership in this case.

Atm I'm leading 3 people in another project. (which has nothing to do with programming)
They do their work because they like doing it, of course there is social pressure, but not because i demand them to do tasks.
They aren't all that experienced so i help and guide them whenever they ask me to.
They give simply give me authority because I'm more experienced in the matter.
Here I have the end responsibility, but I hold them responsible for the tasks i give them.

Now i'm experiencing the same with openkore.
However here kLabMouse is the one who is more experienced.
He is the only one who has started a real fresh initiative for openkore as of just yet.
In AI 2008, the idea's of VCL (starship model) and many others are becoming reality.
kLabMouse is now building the main skeleton structure. Soon the developers can start to build the tasks, AI modules, serverTypes, Environment Listeners, Smart Events, ...
kLabMouse wrote:Totally agree. Anyway, we have thous Leaders even now (except for Dev team leader).
But, there is no person that coordinates tasks between them.
kLabMouse is without doubt the best candidate for the developer team leader position.
In fact, he is already taking this role, with the AI 2008 initiative.
Even more, he is the best candidate for openkore project leader as well.
I will now explain why.

This is basically how things go chronologically:
0) lead developer collects idea's and mentors<-(very important) other developers to develop new features based off the idea's (hires developers)
1) developers develop features
2) documentation leader keeps track of the available documentation tasks (hires documentation writers)
3) documentation writers write documentation for the developed features
4) moderator/communication leader communicates with both lead developer, documentation leader and moderators (hires mods)
5) moderators moderate the forums, which is there mostly for support that the documentation does not offer

Now tell me, what will a project manager other than the lead developer change in this procedural process? Will he tell the lead developer to "move his ask and work"? :lol:
No, seriously, in the end basically everything starts with the code, the rest just follows.
Which puts the developer team leader at the top of the chain,
this is why the developer team leader should also be the openkore project manager.

Still not convinced? Answer this question for yourself: "What was VCL's role and what did he accomplish for kore?"
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Re: PM NOMIONATIONS: An Open Call for an OK Leader

#27 Post by sli »

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Technology wrote:Now tell me, what will a project manager other than the lead developer change in this procedural process? Will he tell the lead developer to "move his ask and work"? :lol:
Yes, he will, because that's how human nature works. Work gets done when someone feels responsible for it. kLab is busy working on the new AI, so who is squashing bugs? No one, because no one is responsible for it. The project leader has to add responsibility so that when bugs are repeatedly ignored and left in the code, someone's losing their position as developer for not doing their job. When you point to a developer and say, "you are responsible for fixing this bug," things get done and bugs get fixed. That isn't happening, and thus very few bugs get fixed. If the project leader's job isn't to get people's asses in gear, then he doesn't have much of a job. As much of a fun project that OpenKore is, that doesn't mean it's exempt from the "business" side of software development (for lack of a better term).
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Re: PM NOMIONATIONS: An Open Call for an OK Leader

#28 Post by Bibian »

lol support team? we'll need people that are used to working with mentally retarded muppets 24/7... seeing as how 95% of are users fit that profile...

ps: just cause i run the forums doesn't mean i intend to me forum leader :P

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Re: PM NOMIONATIONS: An Open Call for an OK Leader

#29 Post by jadjad »

ok, i may be noob in botting and i dont post nor ask questions as well in this forum (because i would rather read thru this forum and learn from it) but i think now i need to.

if i were ponty, i would create this thread nevertheless(kudos to ponty). i can see that all of you has its own points to argue. but in my own opinion, the term "Leader" doesn't necessarily have to be good in programming nor documenting the project. my ideal thought for a leader is someone who can make things done and has good skills in presenting it to the public. he does not need to be in the forum nor doing codes 24/7. but just someone who can manage people, and can deliver OK to make it a top project. i know OK is a great project and "has the potential to be better if not the best" all it takes is a little bit of organization and a little bit of leadership.


We are a community. noob as we are, we are still part of the community. we just need to help each other to make it better.
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Re: PM NOMIONATIONS: An Open Call for an OK Leader

#30 Post by Darki »

Bibian wrote:lol support team? we'll need people that are used to working with mentally retarded muppets 24/7... seeing as how 95% of are users fit that profile...

ps: just cause i run the forums doesn't mean i intend to me forum leader :P
You were a mentally retarded mupped sometime ago, most probably. I'm sure there must be forums where you was called that, because you weren't born mod of OK community. If you don't like to deal with mentally retarded muppets, and don't like the idea of looking for someone to do, what's the point on maintaining an open community, where n00bs can come? Deal with it, because that's one of the negative sides of this open-source project.

I've seen many ways of managing a forum and keep a control even with n00bs. You can for example make n00bs to be able only to certain sections of the forums, like a "n00bland" section with a support sub-section and some kinda n00b playground off-topic sub-section. When you reach some level of posts (like 25, without trashcan being counted I've seen most of the n00bs run away with less than 10 posts when Sli, Ezza or any other mod barks at them), or a mod lets them, they could be able to post in other sections. Look, you'd only need to mod n00bs in only one place. That's only one example.

But the only truth is that nobody other than n00bs will come to the community and the idea is to make a strict athmosphere so this doesn't turn into a n00b playground and mods and experts lose their hopes and nerves, but friendly enough so those n00bs that have potential will remain here and won't go thinking the mods here are a bunch of dickhead $%#&-fuckers because nobody tried to help them when they needed it.

For Sli's post, that is basically what I tried to say in my last one. I agree 100% with that way of managing.
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